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Education and Skills Bill

None the less, many people see a need to tighten up the system to make clear its absolute application to academies. I gave some examples earlier of the way in which they can play the system. I saw something similar in a free school in Stockholm, which is currently a favoured topic of conversation in some quarters. Although there is a ban on selective admission procedures in Sweden, those wishing to get into the school had to attend seven meetings with their parents—five in the evenings and two lasting throughout two Saturdays—before they could even put their names down. Pregnant mothers already had their unborn children's names on the waiting list for a school with ““non-selective”” intake policies. Some academies in this country have similar admissions procedures. I have never been able to understand why academies should be outside the system, just as I have never understood why they should enjoy freedom from Government diktat on curriculums. Why cannot state schools and their heads have the same freedom? I should like to give all state schools the same freedoms as academies, while also imposing on all schools the restrictions on abuse of admissions procedures proposed in new clause 14. The other reason why new clause 14 also does not go far enough is that it leaves out schools that select, directly and openly, on the basis of ability. That is why the hon. Member for Bury, North and I tabled new clauses 20, 21 and 22. Before anyone intervenes to ask, let me say that I am not speaking for the Liberal Democrats; my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil does that from the Front Bench, and those who have questions should address them to him. I am a mere Back Bencher, elected by my constituents to represent them, and I base my views on 22 years of working in three non-selective schools in the state system. I am also basing my views on having sent all three of my children to non-selective state schools in my neighbourhood in Chesterfield, as well as on having spent seven years on the Select Committee in both its incarnations, studying extensively the evidence in both this country and other countries. I thought—I say this with my tongue slightly in my cheek—that there was cross-party agreement on the insidious effects of selection by ability. The current admission arrangements in which the 11-plus operates, to which the new clause applies, determine a child's future at age 11 on the basis of a couple of short, simple tests that are no longer relevant to today's needs. They distort the primary school curriculum. Those who can afford to do so pay for extra coaching. They constitute a high-stakes process that puts unacceptable pressure and anxiety on pupils, parents and teachers. The result is a system that leaves the majority of pupils being perceived, and perceiving themselves, as failures at the age of 11. Also, rather than providing a ladder out of disadvantage, there is significant bias against the less well-off in the test results, which is compounded later in public examinations."““It is simply not right that a child's future should be determined at age 11, nor is it right to segregate children into two discrete groups at that age.”” —[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 July 2006; Vol. 684, c. 544.]" Before anyone asks, let me say that that is not me speaking; it is a direct quote from a Minister, Lord Rooker, on July 10 2006, when he introduced the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 2006.